So Much To Lose

Ch. 9 Closure

It had been a long time since Pickle had been anywhere near the contestant grounds, in fact as he looked back he hadn't left the general area of Hotel OJ since the day she betrayed him. Coming back after so long was strange, but not in the ways he expected.

It was less like having a bitter taste left in your mouth from a bad experience and more like a creeping anxiety. The type you'd experience when you dread something you know you have to do.

Except, Pickle realized, technically this wasn't something he needed to do. Nothing was stopping him from turning tail and running back into the safety of the Hotel, with it's warm glow, and every possible direction from his problems under the sun.

Pickle shook his head and steeled himself. No, he was going through with this, he wasn't sure how much longer he'd be okay with himself letting the hole Taco left in his self esteem fester. She had taken something of him that hadn't quite ever come back.

He was unsure if all the other residents of the Hotel noticed the way his energy waned on certain days, the spiral of video game and movie marathons he threw himself into to turn away from that distress.

He knew Knife did.

It had come up one night, after they'd become friends, and he'd heaved his way up the Hotel's wall from the contestant grounds to come talk to him. At first Pickle had been worried about the sharper object's recklessness, but over time he came to respect it, appreciate it even.

He was dependable. Pickle needed dependable right now.

Just as Knife had made his way inside, he had popped the question quite bluntly.

"Dude, are you okay? You've been... weird lately, is this about her, or is there anything you need?"

Pickle had been stunned in the moment, Knife had always skirted around Taco. He comforted him when he expressed his worries regarding her, but never directly mentioned her, for his sake, he had always assumed. It was a nice gesture.

It was something Pickle had come to expect, a silent acknowledgement, but still one kept to the side, almost like a secret. He assumed everything with Taco was meant to be a secret these days.

"I, it's - well, I guess?" Came his stuttered response, "She stopped sending those letters recently and I guess it's messing with me," he explained, sitting down on his bed.

Knife followed him, gesturing for him to continue.

"Like, I guess my brain is just telling me that now that she's given up on me I truly am worthless. Which is stupid! I know that's not true, and I've been without her for months now but it just... AUGH it hurts and I hate that it does, and I hate that she can still hurt me when she probably doesn't even know she's doing it."

Knife placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and hadn't even said a word, just pulled him into a firm hug. It was what he had needed. Pickle had no clue what he needed now.

Pulled back into the present by the sound of leaves and branches crunching under the group's feet as they approached the forest, it was almost like Pickle could already feel her presence in a strange way.

He glanced Knife's way, making eye contact, he supposed he must have still looked apprehensive, as the skeptical expression knife gave him conveyed how the other still wasn't sold on trying to find Taco.

Pickle wondered how she was. Part of him, perhaps selfishly, hoped she was unhappy, that at least some of the pain she had dealt him became a double edged sword. He supposed it already had, from what bits he knew about her and Mic.

But another part of him desperately wanted her to be alright, even if it wasn't the her he had known.

It had taken months for it to truly set in that the person he'd spent his entire game teamed with, working together, reassuring each other wasn't even real. It was dull, early on sometimes he would look at the photo of them on the picnic blanket and wonder if some crazed maniac had swooped in and stolen his friend's place.